Friendship Redefined
by BilliMonroe
Summary: "The term 'Friends with Benefits' requires a level of friendship, a level of decency and consideration…Anything less, and you just have two people who like to screw each other's brains out when it's convenient…And as much as it kills me," Blaine said tiredly, picking his wrinkled clothes off the floor, "I know that all I'll ever be to you is just that: a convenience."


**A/N: **Hey there, Billi here. It's so great to be back to writing again. Most of you know me for writing Donnie fics (Dean and Bonnie from Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries, respectively), and I promise to resume where I left off with them in another story to be determined (hopefully) in the near future. However, the last three years has changed my life dramatically, and subsequently, my writing/reading interests have changed to match them. Which is why I wanted to give writing for a different fandom a try. If you don't like male on male relationships or do but just don't like Glee, then feel free to read some of my older works or wait for my new Donnie story. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy my take on a storyline that I really didn't think should have ever happened, but enjoyed despite myself, anyway. A special thanks goes to Ms. K8Malloy (check out her stories. They're amazing, especially He's Cheer Captain, and I'm on the Bleachers) who served as a sounding board and partial beta to this first chapter. This story will start off with a T rating, but given the subject matter, there's a 95% chance that it will be increased to an M. And given input from my aforementioned sounding board, that M will be very well deserved. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer: **Yeah, because someone who owns Glee really spends time previewing her episodes on Fanfiction. I do, however, own a laptop, an extensive music collection, an appreciation for hot boys engaging in sexy time madness, and a VERY vivid imagination. Now, let's get on with it, shall we?

**FRIENDSHIP REDEFINED**

Prologue

**You took my heart, and you held it in your mouth. And with a word, all my love came rushing out… - Florence Welch, "Sweet Nothing" **

* * *

Singing was what he did best. Sure, he was a good orator, a passible dancer, and had charm that made even the coldest of hearts feel the condensation of his genuine warmth. But singing was how he expressed himself, how he got his point across when words failed him. An actor true to his heart, those times when words didn't come easily were few and far between, but they were there. Especially when Kurt was anywhere in the vicinity. Then, speech was a lost cause. It was for that reason alone that he'd planned the scavenger hunt.

There were five notes in total, placed strategically around town and commemorating their relationship in a move so romantic, John Hughes would have been taking notes. Because yes, it was that elaborate.

After baring witness to the long-awaited and much deserved Lan—short for Liz and Jan—engagement in the same week of the impromptu nuptials of two of his favorite teachers, Blaine knew that his own engagement had to be more special than the average, run-of-the-mill, get-down-on-one-knee-and-beg-for-a-happy-ending routine. It had to be perfect. It had to be grandiose. It had to be enough to not just make Kurt realize why he'd fallen in love with him in the first place, but to ensure that he'd never feel for anyone else the way he did for Blaine.

And okay, he'd heard the whispers of his supposed delusions and had even seen the looks of sympathy as murmurs from strangers sometimes formed the basis for which his friends pointedly—yet kindly as they could—questioned his sanity. But in Blaine's mind, they just didn't understand. _No one understands Kurt the way I do_, he'd think anytime doubt threatened to settle inside his mind. They'd watched the movies: boy meets girl, they fall in love, boy does something stupid to lose her trust and fuck up the relationship, then spends the next thirty to forty-five minutes trying to get back into the girl's good graces so that they could live happily ever after.

In movie time, thirty to forty-five minutes usually translated to a few months. Blaine knew this because he and Kurt once had an in-depth discussion about it during a summer movie marathon the previous year. Only Blaine didn't have a few months to wait; he could feel Kurt growing colder toward him every day, their friendship frosting around the edges the way that exes often do when trying to recover a friendship that had been deeply bruised by the souring of a romantic relationship. If he didn't do something quickly, he knew that their cute, yet skin deep weekly conversation would soon turn into greetings around holidays before eventually evaporating to nothing.

So, holding onto the creative high of winning Regionals, he worked diligently during the last two and a half months of school, securing after-hour access to both McKinley and Dalton Academy's campuses, ordering the right kind of flowers, sweet-talking Kurt's ex co-workers at The Lima Bean, and recording acoustic cover versions to three of the five songs that he'd needed for his plan to work. By the time Kurt walked into the recital hall at the end of Blaine's graduation per the request of the graduate's cryptic ***Meet me in the chr rm. I have a surprise 4 u.* **text, all Blaine had to worry about was if Sam and Tina were able to keep the flowers fresh upon delivery and whether his heart could take all the waiting.

He needn't have worried about the former. As soon as Kurt walked into the recital hall, he was met with a chalkboard that read: "Boys vs. Girls," over a bouquet of red roses. Inside the bouquet, Kurt found two things: an iPod with a sticky note labeled PLAY ME and a card straight from the florist's shop.

Kurt looked around for any sight of Blaine. It wasn't like the boy to be late, but finding nothing but his gifts, he went back to the envelope and took out the card.

"_Kurt_," it read, "_I never told you this, because I know what it did to your already diminishing self-worth, but the Boys vs. Girls challenge changed my life for the better, because it sent me you. _

"_As you follow the riddle below, listen to the first song on the playlist labeled "Kurt's Surprise"_ _and know that no one can break you. Not even me."_

Confused, but more than a little intrigued, Kurt made his way out to his Black Navigator in the thinning high school parking lot, docked the iPod to his stereo system, and took a minute to decipher the riddle:

**Two hours away,**

**A city apart,**

**On that fateful stairwell**

**Is where you stole my heart.**

Okay, so it wasn't that hard to decipher.

Kurt started the ignition and set his GPS to Dalton—in attempts to play along with Blaine's little game to recreate that day in junior year—despite the fact that, by now, he knew the journey by heart, immediately taking notice as Blaine's acoustic guitar cover of Katy Perry's "Part of Me" filled his speakers.

And as much as he wanted to, he couldn't deny that his smile grew a tiny bit bigger on that highway to redemption.

He played the song on repeat for two hours, committing every rasp and crack of Blaine's voice to memory with a vehemence that suggested he'd be quizzed on it later and sighing in relaxation at the mental picture of his ex's skilled fingers strumming chords onto his skin instead of that old guitar the boy loved so much.

But he'd be lying if he'd said that his relaxation hadn't turned to nail-biting trepidation as the grey brick boarding school loomed ahead against an even grayer sky. Because if they were really reliving _that day_, then they'd have to relive _that question: _What exactly is going on? Which would lead him to the common room where he'd be forced to sit through _That Song. _And that wasn't something that Kurt could do without breaking down. Not again. The wound of his last time hearing that song, stripped as bare as its singer's emotions, was still too raw and exposed to be poked at with the memory stick.

Still, he went into the school, shoulders squared, heart racing, and mind heavy like a soldier crossing enemy lines, because, after all, love was war, right?

And he did still love the boy.

"He's my best friend," Kurt muttered to himself as he entered the building, skipped down the winding staircase two steps at a time, flew through the halls, and somewhat hesitantly reached for the doorknob of the large wooden doors. Best. Friend.

But instead of pint-sized, overactive ex-boyfriends singing flirtatiously—or even sorrowfully if past situations were anything by which to judge—of roaming hands upon skin-tight clothing, a group of blazer-clad prep school boys flew at him, encircling him as their spokesman for the afternoon stepped up and presented him with a faux golden birdcage with a note inside.

"Read it!" Trent clapped, excitedly. Call him crazy, but he was the only one out of their current group of Warblers who had attended school with Kurt and Blaine. If his only crime was wanting to see his two friends together again, then he'd wear his rebellion home proudly.

Kurt opened the bird cage with shaking fingers, extracting the note from inside the thin gold bars.

Again it read, "_Kurt, we've got to stop meeting like this. Cheesy, I know, but when I first heard you sing this song, it was like seeing you for the first time, yet immediately knowing that you would forever be a safe place to call home. So enjoy the song. Then solve the riddle below."_

The boys launched into a cheeky acapella mashup of "Blackbird" and Birdy's "Shelter." There was the prerequisite swaying and tight harmonies that he remembered fondly with just a hint of personality, even if it was an emulation of Kurt's rather than any of the boys singing, and at the end of it, the lyrics, _**I find shelter in this way/ Under cover hide away/ Can you hear when I say/ I have never felt this way**_,rang in his ears all the way to his next riddled destination.

* * *

After a free venti non-fat mocha at The Lima Bean to the covered version of Landon Pigg's "Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop" and a startlingly sexy and completely unique, bluesy version of a song that barely even resembled "Tonight" from _West Side Story _(to be played only inside the confines of Blaine's empty bedroom) the older boy had come to the final song and destination of the scavenger hunt: a live piano performance of Ron Pope's "A Drop in the Ocean" in the now-cleared out McKinley auditorium.

Looking back on things, Blaine probably should have known that choosing a song with an opening line such as: _**I don't want to waste the weekend/ If you don't love me, pretend**_, was setting himself up for failure. Yet, even knowing this, the song choice hadn't seemed like a bad idea. In fact, it had seemed fitting for their relationship, which is why he'd chosen to sing it. Everything about that day, from where he'd placed the notes, to the destinations that they had taken his former lover and the transitioning soundtrack in between was carefully crafted to serve as a physical reminder of each stage in their relationship.

This song, with its cautious tale of a man grappling desperately for something that seemed hopeless, yet still putting his heart and soul on the line to reclaim what had been broken, was no exception. Good or bad, the events of last fall were part of their history, and Blaine was doing his damnedest to turn those nightmarish months into dreams come true. Because he and Kurt deserved that much.

So he played upon that stage, ignoring the way his heart picked up pace and his sweaty fingers threatened to slip off the keys the nearer the older boy got in favor of giving himself over to the love, adoration, and tiny spark of desperation that pulled sad melodies from his fingertips and lungs.

Kurt, it was safe to say, wasn't fairing much better.

He walked slowly down the center aisle, his eyes flitting rapidly, not knowing what to take in first. Was it the boy sitting at the piano bench dressed sharply in his graduation day finest who pounded out notes and sang lyrics that seemed to be made for him? Or was it the multitude of candles flickering around the many candelabra on a stage reminiscent of the audition that represented all that was New York to them, from future planning upon sweaty sheets to heartbreaking devastations on tear-soaked pillow cases.

_**As my train rolls down the east coast/ I wonder how you'll keep warm/ It's too late to cry/ Too broken to move on.**_

His eyes finally settled on watching his ex, who seemed both self-assured in his performance yet suddenly so unsure in his decision to invite Kurt to watch it, and in that moment, Kurt couldn't help thinking that Blaine had been wrong all those years ago. It wasn't so much that he wasn't _good_ at romance; it was that he wasn't quite good at knowing the appropriate time and place in which to _display_ his acts of romance.

Sudden epiphanies that led to passionate kisses in the wake of a friend's tragedy? Yes, please! But doing so just weeks after professing your love—through song, no less—at your crush's place of work when said crush had barely even reciprocated feelings of friendship was an absolute no-no. The same thing could be said of proposing to your best friend not even a year after cheating on him when you two hadn't even reconciled a romantic relationship yet.

Because that, Kurt was seriously starting to suspect, was what Blaine's grand gesture was: a proposal of sorts.

Though, it was hard for Kurt to think about anything a minute later when the music increased in power and Blaine's voice crescendoed into a strong falsetto that soared over the high ceilings of the auditorium and made his knees grow weak. He sank down into the first seat closest to him, worrying the strap on his Coach satchel with fidgety hands, complete in the knowledge that, aside from his NYADA rejection, he had never been more conflicted. On the one hand, he was cursing himself, because, though he'd had to sit down, or otherwise he'd have fainted, admitting that his ex-boyfriend's voice was still a huge turn on and weakness wasn't sending the message that his feelings toward the graduate were nothing more than platonic.

Yet on the other hand, his heart was allowed to leap at the gesture, wasn't it? Friends made each other swoon sometimes, especially when they went out of their way to do sweet things like personally serenade each other. Right? And that's what they were: friends. Best friends. Best. Friends.

The final strains of the song died away with the declaration: _**You are my heaven**_ echoing around the auditorium. And Kurt wanted to clap, he really did. Only the movement, along with his breath and thoughts, were still caught in a state of paralysis by the time Blaine jumped from the stage, ambled over to him, and sat facing him in a chair next to his. Because this was it; no matter what was revealed in these next few moments, good or bad, Kurt knew that it would undoubtedly change their friendship forever.

Except, Kurt wasn't ready for another change in their relationship, not when the last one still brought on the occasional stress-induced nightmare followed by a nausea that lasted for days. He wondered if it were too late to run to the bathroom and fake being sick, not that it would be all that difficult, what with way that his stomach was violently churning, but by the time he'd thought to excuse himself, Blaine was already talking.

"Hi," Blaine breathed shyly.

"Hi," Kurt replied in much the same tone. "What is all this—"

"Listen, Kurt, before you say anything, just let me get this out, please. Please?" he pleaded again at the sight of Kurt opening his mouth to speak, and if the anguish in Blaine's voice didn't shut the older boy up, the sight of him so close to tears definitely did.

Kurt softened slightly and sighed, "Of course."

Blaine took a deep breath, linking his ex-boyfriend's cold, clammy fingers in his, and began the spiel that he'd practiced nightly for the last two months, "When we first met, I was lost, content to blend into the crowd and hide who I really was behind a blue and red blazer. Then, you came along, and you were so sure of yourself, even when others hated you for it, and…and once again, I hid my reason for not pursuing you behind the guise of being a mentor for you. But the truth is, I was even more insecure than you. I was always hiding.

"Even when I transferred to McKinley, I was still hiding, only I was hiding behind you. You became my safe haven, and when you left, it felt like you'd left me vulnerable to everyone who had ever hurt me in the past," by this point, Kurt was growing anxious to speak. Blaine held up a hand to continue.

I'm not blaming you for my mistakes, and I know that I can't take back what I did, but things are different now. Times are different now. In some places, _laws _are even different now. Women are proposing to each other in restaurants, boyfriends are becoming husbands, and…I just…I feel like I'm ready to fight for that. That I'm ready to fight for you. So," Blaine said, pulling his hands from Kurt's in order to dig into his left side pocket, "will you do me the honor of marrying me?" At the conclusion of his speech, he opened his hand and presented the other boy with a deep blue velvet box.

Inside the box, lay an elegantly simplistic white gold engagement ring with a square insert made to fit four princess cut diamonds. Although it was no Tiffany's band, it was clearly expensive and an obvious upgrade to the gum wrapper ring that Kurt, just a year ago, would have accepted as a promise for engagement without hesitation.

He was hesitant now, though. For a solid minute all he could do was blink at the boy in front of him, who looked at him with such hope in those bright golden-green eyes. Somewhere nearby, a radiator sputtered to life, filling the deafening silence during which Kurt spent going over Blaine's every point. The graduate clearly thought that he'd planned his items to the letter T. Yet, there was one tiny detail that had managed to escape his grasp, one tiny detail that had sparked in Kurt such an intense anger he'd thought he'd long since let go of, one tiny detail that he felt compelled to point out to him.

"Boyfriends," he rasped quietly thought gritted teeth.

"What?" Blaine cautioned through a frozen smile that still hadn't quite caught up to his slip-up.

"You said," Kurt enunciated slowly and carefully so as not to lose the grip on his emotions and start screaming his head off. Or worse, sobbing into the other boy's arms, "'Women are proposing to each other in restaurants and boyfriends are becoming husbands,' but _we_," Kurt's voice started to rise and his hands balled tightly into fists in his lap to keep his temper at bay, but his words never halted, "are not boyfriends! WE'RE J—"

"Just friends, I know, Kurt" Blaine said with just the tiniest bit of panic bubbling up in his chest, "but listen—"

"No _you _listen," Kurt interrupted. His voice had resumed its soft timbre but was firm enough to erase all hope for argument, "I really appreciate everything that you've done for me today. It was thoughtful and romantic, and if this were a year ago, I'd have said yes with no thought whatsoever. But you were right: things are different now.

"I realize that you're no longer the boy who hurt me last October, but you're also not the boy that I fell in love with either. And I'm sure that I'm not the boy that you fell in love with either," Kurt hastened to add when Blaine started trembling in his seat. Softening the blow didn't calm the shorter teen down any. It also didn't make what Kurt had to say next any easier. "Which is why I think that…"

_Deep breath, Kurt, in, out, in…_

"That we need to give each other some space for a while. Justuntilwefigureoutwhowearewithouteachother." The last part rushed out in a large breath that felt more needles stabbing at his heart and lungs. He could no longer breathe, and oh God, please let Blaine have understood that last part, because Kurt wouldn't be able to say it again. He wouldn't. He _couldn't._

Luckily, Kurt was spared from a breakdown by the sound of rubber soles squeaking against hard linoleum. It was immediately followed by the harsh slamming of the backstage door, and you might as well have called the fashion intern Ms. Cleo, because, dammit, he'd seen this reaction coming a mile away.

See, one thing about having dated your best friend was that you grew to know that person better than he knew himself and could recognize shifts in his emotional atmosphere moments before even he caught up to the change. So when Blaine sat back on his knees, stunned into silence as Kurt stated his piece on the matter, before finally picking himself up and exiting stage left, Kurt wasn't the least bit surprised. Thing is, though he knew that he wouldn't be able to get the words he's uttered so many times out fully without Blaine fleeing from the auditorium at the first sign of rejection with his back hunched and turned to hide the fact that the light had completely faded from his hazel eyes, he couldn't—no, _wouldn't_—stop himself from setting the record straight. Because he and Blaine _were_ friends. Best friends.

_Just_ friends.

Weren't they?

Yet, if that were true, then why did saying it not make him feel any better this time? He'd known that he had to say no. They weren't the same people they were back then, they damn sure weren't that couple-in-love anymore, and Kurt thought that it was selfish of Blaine to remind him of why that was. But denying Blaine's proposal and being stuck with a ring that the boy hadn't managed to take back in his haste to leave felt like losing a part of his life's dream. And to be honest, it was killing him.

_**A drop in the ocean/ A change in the weather/ I was praying that you and me might end up together/ It's like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert/ But I'm holding you closer than most/ 'Cause you are my heaven**_


End file.
